YouTube announced yesterday that it is partnering with Electronic Arts, EMI Music, iTunes, and Amazon to deliver "click-to-buy" links for music, movies, and books beneath YouTube videos.
Say you are listening to "I Kissed A Girl" on YouTube and want to buy it. The site now provides links to purchase the song on iTunes or Amazon MP3. Companies are not limited to their own videos, either; commercial partners can embed their links beneath any user-generated video as well. The links are relatively unobtrusive; at first glance I barely noticed the link below a video for the new video game Spore. The links seem to come in two forms: either as the text link style made famous by Google, YouTube's parent; or standard iTunes and Amazon buy buttons, which can be found all over the Internet.
Eric E. Schmidt, Google's CEO, recently told The New York Times that he was happy with the recent monetization that YouTube has undergone since Google purchased the video site in 2006. In addition to the "click-to-buy" links, YouTube has been working on distributing ads across the YouTube platform, from ads that run across the bottom of a video, to standard ads that run on a video's watch page, to making YouTube videos a part of the AdSense advertising program for third-party websites. YouTube now has about one billion videos viewed every day, making it an attractive online destination for ad buyers.
The YouTube announcement didn't reveal its advertising partners for the new program or tell how much money Google make offs each transaction. There's also no word on whether smaller Internet entrepreneurs and overnight sensations like Tay Zonday of Chocolate Rain fame or the Numa Numa guy--both of whom sell their own merchandise--will be able to get a piece of the click-to-buy pie. Google may risk alienating users if products they don't approve of start showing up beneath their videos. YouTube clearly has the right to monetize its own site, but does it have the right to make money directly off of its users without input or control from the people who are essentially content producers? That may be a question that needs to be addressed in the coming years.
On the upside, the new click-to-buy program may defuse litigation against YouTube and its users if copyright-holding companies can monetize fan videos and pirated content.
